Ho, Feb. 3, GNA - A total of 1,470,784 people have subscribed to the membership of the National Health Insurance Scheme in the Volta Region by 31 December 2011.

This represents “more than 70 percent of the total population of 2,099,876 based on the 2010 provisional census figure” and the Authority hopes to increase its subscribers to about 80 percent by the end of 2012.

Mr Elliot Nestor Akototse, Volta Regional Manager of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), said this at the 2011 end- of- year review workshop in Ho.

He said active members of the scheme; those who renewed their memberships when the time is due also rose from 374,912 to 526,529 members and default in the distribution of membership identity cards has also gone down from 453,345 to 143,713 as at December 2011.

He said by 31 December 2011 a total of 28,641,968.18 Ghana cedis was paid to service providers in the region.

Mr Akototse said some of the challenges facing the Scheme in the region included non-availability of essential drugs on the NHIS medicine list in the hospitals, application of ante natal tariff to all pregnant women who call at the facilities even though some of the cases could be general care, over billing by some service providers.

Others are detention of patients for observation billed as admission, treatment not matching diagnosis, prescription of branded medicines instead of the use of generic names and some staff of the service providers extorting money from insured clients.

The Volta Regional Director of Health Services Dr Joseph Nuertey, called for quarterly meetings between the NHIA and the Ghana Health Service in the region to resolve challenges and make service delivery on both sides more efficient.

He said he was happy that the NHIA recently paid claims to the facilities and called for speeding up of work on the outstanding claims.